You might first ask yourself what your goal might be. Are you speaking to further establish yourself and your company as thought leaders? Are you trying to pitch some amazing product? Are you hoping to share the learnings found in your awesome book (available for 24.95 from O’Reilly Publishing)? That’s a good first thing to know: your goal. But after that, my advice is fairly the same.

How to Start Speaking at Events

Blog Your Speech – My first presentation at a conference was Content Networks are the New Blogs. I gave it at BarCamp Boston. I think it went smashingly, but if you want to know for sure, ask Christopher S. Penn. He was there. That’s where we founded PodCamp. Before I stepped on stage (in this case, it’s BarCamp, so the barrier to speaking is pretty low), I looked for support about the blog post, to see if it fit my potential audience.

Since then, I still use the technique. I write about the types of speeches I hope to give. It works all the time. I often hear from various verticals with an association meeting who want to better understand something I brought up in a blog post, or they’ll ask me to further customize something to a specific industry. In both cases, I love the opportunity. It’s a great way to find new places to speak.

Make Friends – It never hurts to actually know some conference organizers. I didn’t know Rick Calvert well before speaking at the first BlogWorld Expo, but I met him and Patti Hosking at Gnomedex and that made it easier to be invited to speak.

Showing up at conferences and having decent conversations with people makes it a bit easier to start speaking at events, because then people come to realize and appreciate the kinds of things you’re about, and might want to know more about your ability to speak on a stage.

Shoot Video- So, you might not have put this one together, but you don’t have to attend a conference to speak. You can just set up your video camera or the iSight in your laptop, and shoot your own speech. Videobloggers do it all the time. Or haven’t you ever watched Gary Vaynerchuk?

Now, if you get to speak at an event, at all costs, try to get some video capture of it. Why? Because it means that people will get the chance to see you in action. And that brings me to my next point .

Have a Speaking Page

One of the best things I ever did was build a speaking page, which contains a few elements for you to get a better sense of what I can do for your organization:

• It starts with a two paragraph overview of who I am and what I talk about.
• It goes right into sample speaking topics, which are write-ups of presentations I’ve given. (These make it really easy for someone to envision how to use me at their event.)
• Next comes some sample video presentations (see why I told you to shoot video?). These have proven really helpful to me.
• I then follow with the laundry list of places crazy enough to have had me speak there.
• Next to last, but vital are testimonials, which give others the chance to brag about you.
• And finally, I give people an email address where to contact me.

Having a speaking page has given me lots in the way of evidence that I’m doing okay when it comes to presenting.

Social Proof

I also use my LinkedIn profile to get recommendations from people who’ve seen me speak, and I list professional speaker as one of my “jobs” on the site. Further, if I’m going to an event, I blog about the event at least once before attending, and I use Twitter a lot at the event so that it’s not unknown that I’m speaking yet again.

This is all under the realm of social proof. When people see you in the role of speaker, they better understand how you’re going to help, and what you’re going to deliver. The more they see proof of how you’ve delivered, the more they’ll be interested in hiring you for the next gig.

How to Get Paid to Speak

Ask.

Okay, that’s step 1, and believe me it’s not that easy. We don’t pay speakers for my New Marketing Summit, and I couldn’t pay for speakers at Video on the Net. Lots of shows can’t afford to pay for speakers, but those are just the shows you know about. There are very deserving and interesting shows out there that do pay a speaker’s fee, and that do want a paid professional speaker who will deliver quite a lot of value back to their attendees for that money.

One way to see who might potentially pay is to see what they charge for admission. If the price is high, there’s likely a little budget for speaking fees.

**Note: The opportunity to speak at certain places, even for free, sometimes outweighs a fee.

Don’t discount a speaking opportunity because it doesn’t pay. Some places even charge for speaking, as part of a larger sponsorship or exhibitor’s package. That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities and value in speaking there. Instead, it means that you have to have a conversion plan in mind to transform your efforts as a speaker into business downstream.

Other Things to Consider

Have a good About page on your website. People want to know about the person they’re considering for a slot in their show. Make sure you’re timely in responding to requests for information (which I’m horrible at, but people have been nice to me). Do what you can to make your presentation worth their time, let alone their money.

And above all else, start somewhere. I’ve done some rough analysis, and it turns out that exactly 100% of speakers I’ve met at conferences all started by speaking.

The Bonus Round

If you want to learn more about what I think makes a top shelf presentation, I’m going to cover that in my free newsletter, which is different than my blog content. That’ll come out by the end of the week, so if you’re interested in more, subscribe for free.

What do you think? Did I miss anything? What else would you tell folks who want to start speaking at events? How did you get your start? What else can I answer for you?

And what do you think makes a speaker into a rockstar?

Photo credit, Mister C.C. Chapman and Christopher S. Penn

WIIFM

First off, I write about this often. Know why I started the post the way I did? I was following this speaking tips post where it says to start each speech by answering “what’s in it for me.” That is vital.

Know what most people do? They start with “blah blah blah about me, thanks to everyone who ever put on a conference, etc, etc etc.

Engage people immediately and they will be with you.

Work With Your Audience

If you’re going to bother speaking in a room, please BE with the room, IN the room, and be connected with them as best as you can be. I do this in Twitter. I even asked them for speaking advice. Well, it’s the same in person. You can marshal the people in a space, and something magic happens every time you do that: people feel invested in the project.

Push Vision Matched With Value

When I spoke at the Stamats event in Tampa, I was excited that so many people in the audience were really tuned in to the notion of what social media could do for their higher education marketing. I turned my presentation towards the mindset of passion. And by that, I meant that I talked up hard the future of all this stuff, and what it can do for us.

But who stole the show, in my eyes, was Brad J. Ward. His speech was both passionate and value-driven. You could do something with his speech. And that lesson, adding value to the passion, is what I took away from that part of that event.

Takeaways

The very best speeches I’ve seen give me takeaways, something for me to do.

More Advice

The most important part of delivering your speech is believing in what you’re saying, knowing what you’re saying, and conveying it with emotion, dimensions, and energy. Please put your heart into it.

And make sure you watch and learn from great speakers. Want to see a mountain of them? Watch POP!Tech and TED and learn from them. Practice doing what they do once, and then try making it your own.

Even more speaking advice from my old posts, if you want it.

What did I miss? What else do you want to tell people about your speaking experience, or what do you want to know about that I didn’t talk about?

What do you have?

Photo credit, Frames Media, who is a kickass photographer from the NY area, and a really nice guy.

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So, with that as a backdrop, I give you Dean Hunt:

Learning To Become a Great Public Speaker by “Picking Up” Women

Flashback a few months and I was dreadfully afraid of public speaking. And being a buzz marketing “guru” meant people weren’t expecting show and tell about my goldfish in front of 5 year olds. They wanted me speaking in front of hundreds of people who had paid thousands of dollars to be there.

Well it’s hard to be a “guru” when your knees are knocking together and sweat is dripping off every part of your body. Obviously, something had to be done– and fast. The problem was that public speaking is BORING. Most people run off to Toastmasters (which I tried), read a bunch of books (which I did), and even throw some hypnosis or NLP in there for good measure (I did this as well)

Luckily for me, I’m NOT most people. I decided to do what I do best, turn this into something exciting and fun, so I am learning public speaking by “picking up” women. Why? Because meeting women can be just as terrifying as public speaking, and it basically involves a lot of the same skills. Let’s take a look at a few:

Self Confidence – No one will listen to a speaker who isn’t confident in their own abilities. Pick up artists require the same self confidence or a woman will smell their fear and send them home with their tail between their legs.

Body Language – Public speakers need to display confident body language, understand what messages their body is sending, and read the body language of the audience. Well, pick up artists do exactly the same thing.

Vocal Tone – Public speakers tend to slow down their speech and lower their vocal tone to display confidence. Pick up artists… you guessed it.

Charisma – Boring people have a very hard time making a living as public speakers. But everyone one loves the charming, interesting, and funny person at the party, bar, or on stage.

Performance – You don’t have to be on a stage to put on a performance either. Pick up artists actually use routines that can range from magic tricks to conversations with seductive hidden undertones.

At the end of the day, public speaking and meeting people are intertwined with the same skill sets. While “picking up” women may sound sleazy… what it really means is making yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. I.e. Making yourself a more interesting and appealing person.

So, whether you’re in front of thousands of people or in a more intimate setting, you should be practising the skills mentioned above. It just so happened that meeting women was more fun for me than trying to conquer stage fright.

And that’s the most important lesson here: the more fun you’re having, the more you’ll learn. So try to find ways to learn skills that motivate you, not terrify you.

Have you ever found a way to “cheat” your learning system like this? Have an amazing pick-up or disastrous public speaking story? I’d love to hear from others that feel my pain. Or just challenge me to make your own goals more fun.

I will do an update post on here in a few months, with the specific things I have learnt, techniques I have developed etc.

Dean provides a bio:

Dean Hunt is the net’s leading buzz marketer. He is also a high-end business consultant, and is famed for his killer bunnies, entertaining insights, oh… and getting over 260,000 unique visitors to his blog in an 11 day period…. for FREE.

You can read his rants and tips at www.DeanHunt.com,receive over 7 free buzz reports at www.BuzzProfits.com and find out more about his services by emailing dean@buzzprofits.com